Mini Operas

A few years
ago, I shared an OTF post on OperaLively I had called “Opera Domestica”, and it
featured a series of MTV-like opera video clips created by Canadian composer
Alexina Louie. These “short operas” – typically 3 to 5 minutes long,
essentially encapsulated a single aria.

The works I
chose to assemble in today’s montage are not too dissimilar – they are
essentially single arias, meant to stand alone in concert, and in some cases
sound like they’re taken out of a larger (contemporaneous) operatic work, inspired by a character from literature.

The text
for Scena di Berenice is taken from Act 3, scene 9 of Pietro Metastasio’s
Antigono, a libretto which had originally been set by Hasse in 1743 and
subsequently by over thirty composers, including Jommelli (1746), Gluck
(1756), Traetta (1764), Paisiello (1785) and Joseph Haydn (1795-97).
Although betrothed to Antigono, Berenice is actually in love with his son,
Demetrio. Torn between his feelings for Berenice and his filial duty, Demetrio
can see no way out of his predicament, and has resolved to kill himself. In
“Berenice, che fai?” the disconsolate heroine deliriously laments her fate and
longs to die alongside her beloved.

The
settings by Haydn and Avondano open this week’s montage.

Mozart
wrote several concert arias
and I retained a few for today’s montage. The librettists for these arias
include Vittorio Amedeo Cigna-Santi and Michele Sarcone.

At age 11 Juan Crisostomo Arriaga started composing major chamber, orchestral and choral works, the most remarkable of which was a two-act opera 'Los Esclavos Felices', written at the age of 13 and successfully performed in Bilbao.

When Arriaga was 16 he was sent to study at the Paris Conservatoire where the Principal, Cherubini, judged Arriaga's choral work 'Et Vitam Venturi' (now lost) to be a masterpiece. He absorbed all the principles of harmony and counterpoint in only three months and two years later, aged 18, he became the youngest professor ever appointed at the Conservatoire.

Among Arriaga’s Paris works is Erminia, based on lyrics by the French poet Vinnay but sung in an Italian translation by Giovanni Gandolfi. Erminia is sometimes referred to as an opera, because it suggests two scenes.

It's one
of those songs which has such a fantasy feel about it. I think people should
just listen to it, think about it, and then make up their own minds as to what
it says to them... "Bohemian Rhapsody" didn't just come out of thin
air. I did a bit of research although it was tongue-in-cheek and mock opera.
Why not?

Freddie
Mercury

To close
the montage, I selected Queen’s "Bohemian Rhapsody”. The song is highly
unusual for a popular single in featuring no chorus, combining disparate
musical styles and containing lyrics which eschew conventional love-based
narratives for allusions to murder and nihilism. It consists of sections,
beginnin g with an introduction, then a piano ballad, before a guitar solo leads
to an operatic interlude. A hard rock part follows this and it concludes with a
coda.